almost 9 years ago from David Wilder, Creative Director
I'd have to say it's a 1px drop shadow on text. It's almost as if it's taught in school that shadows are the only way to make text read over any given background.
Image sliders/carousels.
Yes big one, and mostly its from higher up. They all want their part on the home page. haha
Specifically, for when the goal is to feature several things at equal importance.
A carousel flatters one's idea that page height is paramount, and that hidden content is still noticed if it cycles automatically at some point.
Putting black gradient on the image to make the white text legible.
Is that really a crutch? Given a situation where you have limited control over what the underlying image is it seems like a pretty reasonable solution.
If nothing else, it seems like an ugly solution in a lot of cases.
Well to me a crutch is something that works, but its just holding you there when you should find a better solution overall.
Like using a crutch instead of healing/setting the leg.
I agree to Jonathan on this one. Crutch is not supposed to be a bad thing but it holds you back. It becomes a go to solution and difficult to think another (or better) way around the problem.
Yes, this is actually one of the "best" crutches in this thread I think. I don't think anyone would have a gradient transition to image if they could choose
i recently learnt that those are called scrims
Reducing and minimising so everything is above the fold. Admittedly this is usually the clients input, though.
Oh god this one was the bane of my freelance career.
No difference when you work in-house :(
YES. And usually that means they want it in a slider/carousel, which is another crutch.
Oh how much I hate sliders. So distracting.
Tip:
After lots of usability testing, I found out that some people don't scroll. It's a very real thing and you should definitely think about it and run some usability tests.
Is it because of their device though? (having super old computers, etc?)
They're still users – their tech isn't relevant. For example: if one person out of 20 in a usability test doesn't know that they should scroll, then that represents 5% of your user base and you need to accommodate for that.
Interesting approach. Same argument can be made for those on Internet Explorer.
I've actually been moving towards designing and targeting for your "target personas" - even if that's having a subpar experience for a couple of your non-targeted personas. It's a sacrifice that will always need to be made because I'm looking to hit objectives, KPIs, conversion, etc - not solving for outlying use cases.
Exactly. You've got to strike a balance between what % of edge-case users you'd like to cater for and design/dev time.
Honestly — I've never really bothered with personas. They seem too speculative for an industry with access to such a wealth of data but I'm probably wrong. Data-driven design with lots of AB testing seems like a better option, but it can lead to a soulless product which quickly fades away as soon as good competition appears.
I'm probably going to end up writing a massive blog post/essay about this
Cool, I'll be excited to read it! Thanks for the convo.
With Airwalk Design http://airwalk-design.com/
I found that users do love to scroll (we have infinite loading). Our bounce rate is low and a very high number of users scroll through to at least the forth set of images.
If you can do it right, users are happy to scroll in my opinion.
I'm sure that's true, it's dependant on your user base
I agree :)
FLAT DEISNG
LOGN SHADOWS
Spelling mistakes.
Circular avatars/profile pics. Designers love it because it looks modern but is so over used. And you actually see less of the image this way. Not the ideal way to crop photos.
Avatars don't need to be square to be recognizable though. While I agree that circular avatars may very well be overused, you also have to take into consideration how they play in to the overall design's aesthetic, and in a variety of cases circular avatars may be preferable to square.
I do see this being used as a crutch for modernity.
I disagree that seeing more of the image would be a greater fulfillment of an avatar's purpose. I only want to see enough information in an avatar to tell me the identity of a person.
The more room you have in an avatar, the more people might be encouraged to use pictures with too much information.
I think there is more science behind this than you might initially think. Circular avatars actually are easier for the eyes/brain to process since we're used to seeing faces in a more circular format (vs rectangular).
This is true if you live on a boat.
I think if your target audience is female, I could see this to be true potentially.
Consider that it is a way to make them visually distinct, in a world (wide web) where most things are square.
TECHNICALLY light exposed through a lens creates a circular image, and square or rectangular photos are the result of cropping :D
…but yes, it's very trendy. Sorry about the pedantry xD
I prefer circles because it feels more friendly and when it deals with avatars that's a perfect situation for the use case IMO.
You do see less of the image, but faces do tend to be circular, so you're just losing background.
Screenshots or mockups displayed with perspective. Usually makes viewer think the screenshot/mock is more polished while making it actually unreadable.
This times a million.
This is actually a crutch.
A mockup should rarely be used for it's pixel perfect nature. Especially in the medium it's a representation of.
A mockup of an app or a site, on a computer, can too easily be confused with the real thing.
A mockup in perspective hammers home the idea that it is being 'presented'. There is a politeness to flagging that a mockup isn't a working interface, and that it can't be interacted with.
"Scroll down"
"But everyone knows to scroll down"
Making every link on Designer News open in a new tab and generally annoying me every single day :(
No way, man! target="_blank" isn't always bad! In this case, I think it's good. I know that explaining to you that something you find frustrating actually isn't to me is a useless game, but I feel like I have to share my opinion in case someone from LayerVault is reading this and considering changing it!
I never even noticed this because I always right-click to open in a new tab anyway. NICE.
ctrl + click / cmd + click
You owe me a beer, I've just given you a few seconds of your life back
Appreciate it, but I knew this, haha. I use the term "right-click" pretty loosely for both of command+click and actual right-click :)
That's a common practice not a crutch...
Not me. Since I keep Designer News constantly open, I'd rather links open in a new tab. And I'm super busy, I don't have time for right click > open new tab.
Feel this! It's manageable on desktop, terrible on mobile.
!important in CSS rules.
Good point, I still have used !important...except in email. Curses.
I'm feeling a lot of trends vs. crutches here. It's a squares and rectangles kinda situation.
1) Preferences and Customization: there's research to suggest this a bad thing and I see it all the time. Here, the crutch is deferring design work to the customer. Instead of doing the work to figure out the best way to solve their problem, products offer settings that allow the customer to design the interface.
2) Using your homepage/dashboard/first thing the customer sees as a dumping ground for calls-to-action that are irrelevant to what the customer is doing. Instead of figuring out the best way to deliver the CTA within a given job-to-be-done (which sometimes is a lot of work), many products just stick it on a dashboard or put it in a modal on the homepage.
Yes. Along the same lines: adding more sort/filter options to a screen.
If you ever want to see where the product team had a disagreement, open the settings tab. - via https://twitter.com/ryanchris/status/421351628994646016
Helvetica (*shots fired!)
Gosh, I totally agree... I wish Apple would use another font.
Hamburger icon
Not using vowels in your startups name.
I chuckled. This seems to be more of a trend than a crutch, though.
Hiding navigation behind an icon on desktop and navigation drawers.
Agencies all do the "huge text overlay menu" thing now. I swear almost every agency site I go on nowadays uses it.
I wouldn't call this a crutch. Its a focused interaction. You want to navigate, here are your options without any distractions. While I wasn't apart of the decision to do this on the Huge site, I implemented a full screen takeover nav on my own site a couple years ago. I'm all about it.
It works well. Our agency refresh won't have it though. Guess we're the 1%.
Can't believe that ribbons and / or 'stamps' haven't been noted yet. "How do I treat this text? Bam - with a ribbon. "
Yes! And type on an angle
ThemeForest
page-container {background-image: url(some-10%-grayscale-image.png) no-repeat bottom right;}
CSSMania
My design/dev mentor
Hamburger Icon
My least favorite are: * A large slider of images for the hero, usually each unrelated * Collapsing/hiding content users find valuable through tabs, accordions, modals, 3D rotating divs
Both types of UI are trying to solve the problem of dealing with handling content. Yes, it may look better to have as few things visible as possible if the design is all about minimalism, but by taking the quick approach of 'just hide it until the user happens to click or hover over the area' is amateur. First, deal with how you can display the content, either through better copywriting, typography, visual hierarchy, etc. Remember that most users aren't going to be as savvy as you, and many will exit the site entirely if they can't figure out where to find the content they wanted to see quickly and easily.
A coworker once said, "Modals are the working man's codpiece."
Right rails.
"We need a space for ads, let's make a column for it."
"Ooh, now we have space for all kinds of junk the reader will never interact with."
Large Video Backgrounds. You have to load a friggin' 2~5 MB video to just beautify your hero Container that I would look at for less than a second.
Blog sidebars & inline article links.
Why do I need to be distracted by this crap while I'm trying to read your article?
Furthermore, why is most of this crap on the page in the first place?
Science has condemned multitasking as a productivity method, and yet designers still think it's perfectly fine to assault readers with 100 different link options while reading an article.
Yes, internal linking is important for SEO, but do we really need to do it in the body of the article?
Use a source index and related links AFTER the article.
Thankfully, more designers are figuring this out.
End rant.
"designers"
More often than not, it's the clients dictating this type of thing, in my experience.
Maybe for custom work, but clients can't be blamed for the thousands of themes designed with these features.
Plus, it's part of a designer's job to inform clients on design matters.
I never let clients dictate anything that ultimately works against their goals. They may persist in the end and get their way, but I'm certainly not going to relent without giving them my recommendation.
A) Definitely agree on those themes - wonder if they include them because they want to or because including them will help the themes sell better? Could be a chicken/egg thing going on.
B) I would love to say that this worked with all clients all the time, but I've found that once certain clients see something on another site or get an idea in their head, they will cling to that until the end. Sure, I'll recommend other solutions, but doesn't mean I always win that fight.
Yeah, I don't win them all either. But I feel like we all gotta keep trying.
Smaller companies tend to listen, but some of the bigger clients I've worked with have a "vision" that doesn't include my input.
I've just never understood those companies that hire you and then presume to know what the best solution is. It's a sore point for me, as I'm sure it is for all designers.
Disagree with you on inline links.
Links maketh the web.
Separating them from the content makes them less usable...
Imagine trying to use Wikipedia without inline links for example.
Ok that's an extreme article, but a well designed link style shouldn't be so loud that it makes a paragraph of text containing a few links unreadable.
Yeah, I see your point.
A few subtle links within an article is fine. I guess my biggest beef is with these sites where you're reading an article and damn near every other sentence is a hyperlink to another article.
I just keep thinking, "hey, can I finish the article I'm reading NOW before you redirect me to some other article?"
I much prefer the method employed in books where you have an unobtrusive indicator that a source is cited or an idea needs elaboration, then you can reference those at the bottom of the page or in the appendix.
I just prefer an unobtrusive reading environment where I can focus on the content in front of me without being tempted to click away.
Back button in mobile UI.
iOS's back button.
White text over a colorized photograph in the header of the landing page.
Showing a button's :active state—the one with the inverted gradient and inner shadow—on :hover.
Also, using em-dashes everywhere—they're sexy ;)
It would be really interesting what actual users think about all these crutches, if there are some amongst them, that they dislike, or if they just don't care as long as they find the information they are looking for.
I don't know if it's a crutch so much as a cliche but I fly into a murderous rage whenever I see designers appropriating the NYC Hardcore logo for taco shops or their one person studio branding, etc.
Blurred Hero images (on a homepage or otherwise). If someone can't see what it is, what is the purpose? why not use just a texture, pattern or some sort of color. If you use a photograph, make it work as a photograph or omit it.
I'm sure I could think of others. Bare in mind all of these could be disputed within reason.
Phone number in the header. This is a rant for me in itself but its not about that.
The reason it's a crutch is it never looks good being crammed in somewhere around the logo or the navigation while you're trying to keep it relatively compact. Nevermind what you do on a small screen as it has this importance.
Full-width background images are like the granite countertops of web design.
Definitely overused.
Background images.
'Scroll to enter'
Lines, usually used to separate/organize items
What else to use?
Space.
That's correct. Space, color or grouping of similar objects is typically a MUCH better way to organize clusters of elements.
I second carousels, especially on homepages!
Generalized feedback.
"Just ______-idize it!"
Flat Design -- not the whole idea behind it but people just copying the same colours, layouts and icon styles. I think people should put their own spin on it and not copy it wholesale from one another.
Essentially copying.
Grunge textures
What is this? 2003?
Retro 2003
'Hollow' buttons in the page header - (1px border with no fill). I'm not sure this is a crutch, but it's certainly an overused design pattern these days (I'm guilty of overusing it)
I don't think the issue is with certain styles being a "crutch." I think it comes down to execution.
Sometimes a 1px drop shadow on text fits the art direction and at other times a dark gradient over unknown images to make white text readable is perfectly acceptable. I think it becomes a "crutch" when the solution is used for a "trendy" sake or because "everyone else is doing it."
It also comes down to technical execution—make sure it's pulled off well if it is being used in many different existing projects.
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